October 17, 2011

Big Journalism has learned that the Occupy Washington DC movement is working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement. Someone has made the emails from the Occupy D.C. email distro public and searchable. The names in the list are a veritable who’s who in media....

In these emails we see MSNBC’s Ratigan, hawking his book in the footnotes, instructing occupiers on how properly to present their demands and messages while simultaneously appearing on television reporting “objectively” on the story (when he’s not taking part in the protests himself as content.)...

We know that the original movement was kicked off by a Soros-funded group called Adbusters; that union groups and radicals routinely overthrow leadership unfriendly to an occupation of the occupation (check out how Occupy St. Louis was hijacked by ACORN off-shoot MORE); and now we know that media, including MSNBC itself, is apparently helping occupiers better influence the public by both writing their messages and giving them a platform.

Don't forget - Steven Lerner laying out the plan. Glenn Beck exposing him, The attack on JPMorgan Chase delayed as a result. Michael Moore kicking off the meme - "We're not broke. There's plenty of money. They have it. It's ours. We can take it." words to that effect directly out of Lerner's plan.

Lerner said the Unions could not do it directly. the plan included enticing students to default on their loans to bring the banks down, same with mortgage holders. That's how they draw people in.

They had a couple of weak attempts to launch. than this.

Launches in multiple cities do not come "spontaneously.' It takes a lot of work by "community organizers." To kill a national community is not an easy job.

It's not clear to me what any of these people are trying to accomplish, other than to alienate the middle-class voter. If Obama were trying to distinguish his positions from theirs, I'd think they are a way for him to seem like a centrist adult for the forthcoming elections. But he's really not doing that. So what is this "movement", whoever orchestrates it, supposed to accomplish?

It's good to see these MSM-types getting involved. Why shouldn't they? It's better than sitting around and doing nothing. They're probably fed up with the Establishment too; now they have an opportunity to do something about it.

The idea that the Occupy movement is somehow less authentic if a case can be made that it is not "grassroots" is just nonsense.

Andrew Breitbart is a partisan himself. He's working for The Man, the Establishment, and everything that is the opposite of what the V Mask represents.

Perhaps we can entice J to opine on the implications of CDOs on capital formation. Franglo can help out with the ethics of using synthetic financial instruments to mitigate risk. And finally we can get Garage Mahal to craft the message regarding the impact of borrowers failing to repay their debts in accordance with the terms of their borrowing agreements. Then I think we will be done and people can go back to their Mom's.

Yes Michael, sure. My response: it IS unethical. Banks should lend money at a small rate of interest to individuals and businesses. And that's it. Banks should be boring enterprises. Finance is not an industry to base your economy around. Just look at what happened in the past 3 years.

Take up your complaints with the Working Family Party taking out ads offering to pay people to protest. Or the protestor who admitted he was paying some of the protestors to be there --- and the people he pointed out referred to him as their boss.

Yes Michael, sure. My response: it IS unethical. Banks should lend money at a small rate of interest to individuals and businesses. And that's it. Banks should be boring enterprises. Finance is not an industry to base your economy around. Just look at what happened in the past 3 years.

franglo: In the last three years people borrowed against their homes to buy bass boats and nice vacations and Rolex watches. Had they met their obligations we would not have had a financial crisis. And borrowing rates today more than qualify as "small rates of interest." The one month LIBOR rate has been south of 30 bps for quite a while. You're down with that I hope.

In the minds of likely voters, Washington, not Wall Street, is primarily to blame for the financial crisis and the subsequent recession.

That is the key finding of this week’s The Hill poll, which comes as the national Occupy Wall Street movement — a protest that objects to risky practices and excessive salaries at major banks, along with American income disparities in general — enters its second month.

The movement appears to have struck a chord with progressive voters, but it does not seem to represent the feelings of the wider public.

Taking a step back here, I am not sure I understand Breitbart, etc.'s goal... to dislike something, you don't need to work so hard to generate "proof" like Dylan Ratigan, an explicitly liberal pundit (not a straight journalist and doesn't represent herself as such-- a blatant partisan pundit) has emailed with protest "organizers" (in quotes since there is no one set of organizers, but a bunch of different people acting in concert).

I mean, if you hate Occupy Wall Street just hate it. Why generate these labored "exposes" that stretch credibility. Who is the audience? Or do the conservative activists feel somehow threatened by this new thing?

franglo: Briebart is simply pointing out that the "journalist" Ratigan is a participant in a story he is covering. Generally speaking that is not kosher in journalism, or at least it wasn't when journalism was taken seriously.

And LIBOR is not low enough for you? What kinds of spreads would you think would result in "small rates" of interest that you would approve of? Very important to have an opinion on this if you think banks are bad bad bad.

Michael: Synthetic products like CDOs had nothing to do with it, right? Even though they represented sums of money exponentially larger than consumer mortgage debt? The ratings agencies had nothing to do with it, right? It was all the fault of stupid greedy poor people.

I feel sorry for you. But at least your rich friends at the country club like you.

franglo: if the people had repaid their debts there would have been no problem. Certainly you understand that had the credits kept their bargain then counter parties would not have been stressed. You certainly know that don't you? It doesn't matter whether the people failing to do what they contracted to do are rich or poor. If they violated their contracts and did not pay their interest and principal as agreed they are responsible for the failure of the system. The banks provided them with a product and the borrowers, many millions of borrowers, decided not to honor the deal.

It might make you feel better if you think I belong to a country club but I do not. No one I know is happy about the people failing to repay their debts as agreed. I for one did not borrow recklessly even though money was both easy and, as you put it, available at "small rates."

the people you vote for count on this level of ignorance in order for them to remain in power.

Dude, a.) I don't give a fuck if they were paying people to protest, even though there is no evidence from your link that they are b.) the fact OWS is sending the right into a giant tizzy shows they're hitting the mark. It's a win-win from where I stand.

garage: I don't think the right is in a "tizzy" about the OWS "movement." Bemused, yes. Somewhat thrilled at the dislocation of the MSM as it pertains to this versus the TP and amazed at the very stark contrast in behavior, tactics and objectives of the two groups. I would think you would be embarrassed by OWS but then the OWS is a blank slate, rather like our President was. You can make of them what you will. Other than tidy, of course. You can't make them that.

Franglo: A CDO is directly linked to the performance of the bond underlying or which it mirrors or replicates. It only fails if the borrower fails to pay.

The borrowers lost their homes because they did not pay their bills on time and the lenders took their collateral as agreed in the original deal.

Those on the wrong side of CDOs lost every penny that was invested in the deals that the borrowers failed to repay. Because of the leverage involved they often lost considerable fortunes. Many of the people who made these investment lost their jobs.

A CDO is not in any way a "Ponzi Scheme." You should look up both and see that in Ponzi scheme money is taken from one party to pay another party in the guise of a return of or on capital. A CDO is a collateralized debt obligation that depends on the underlying performance of the mirrored investments. It does not require more investors to work. Not a Ponzi Scheme.

You might also have a look at the historical performance of banks that were deeply invested in the housing industry. Some of them no longer exist so you might say they lost quite a bit. Many thousands of their employees lost their jobs in the process. You do know about all that do you not?

You know it would great if we just had some way of running an experiment to see whether the Tea Partiers are right or whether the Occupiers are. If only there was a place full of natural resources and inhabited by an industrious people that we could partition... maybe even a peninsula. We could divide it in some arbitrary way... say North and South... so that we could see what would happen when we demonize corporations and have the government run things in one partition and have the people live relatively free and unencumbered in the other.

Hmm, too bad such a thing has never happened anywhere... at least it hasn't according to the OWS crowd. Tea Partiers know their history much better than that.

Michael: was there anything wrong with the practice of packaging nuclear-bad mortgage debt in "innovative" ways that screened the risk from the buyer and betting on it in a free for all unregulated marketplace that multiplied the consequences of people defaulting on their debts by many orders of magnitude? Or is that just all in a days work on Wall Street?

Franglo: Nuclear bad is an interesting way to put some of the tranches that were bundled and sold. I will repeat myself by saying that if the borrowers had held to their bargain then there would have been no losses, nuclear or otherwise.

Having said that, there were enough greedy buyers, mostly in Europe, who thought that 1000 bad bonds were safe, or at least worth the risk of the outsized returns that would have resulted if the borrowers had met their obligations. As any smart investor would know, 1000 bad loans do not represent diversity or a sane allocation of risk.

Hmmm. When you offer a loan it's with the understanding that one possibility is that the counterparty can default. In which case you take something from them, like their house, in exchange. That's what a loan is, correct?

Now, if the system worked it would be able to handle people defaulting. It couldn't. Because it is rotten and full of high-flying crooks. Who, when the jig was up, held a gun to the economy and said, "Bail Out or Else!"

Michael: was there anything wrong with the practice of packaging nuclear-bad mortgage debt in "innovative" ways that screened the risk from the buyer and betting on it in a free for all unregulated marketplace that multiplied the consequences of people defaulting on their debts by many orders of magnitude? Or is that just all in a days work on Wall Street?

Hmmm. When you offer a loan it's with the understanding that one possibility is that the counterparty can default. In which case you take something from them, like their house, in exchange. That's what a loan is, correct?

Except for the fact that Barack Obama supporters like yourself will not allow that other thing to be taken in exchange, as we see from OWS Obama Party members demanding that banks forgive all debt and that all foreclosures be blocked.

So you have made the system dysfunctional, franglo. But now you're blaming the banks for the fact that YOU broke it. YOU refuse to allow the banks to collect the assets they are legally owed. YOU refuse to hold up your end of the bargain.

Now, if the system worked it would be able to handle people defaulting. It couldn't. Because it is rotten and full of high-flying crooks.

Isn't that entertaining?

Franglo, who supports and endorses people not paying their bills, reneging on agreements, and refusing to surrender collateral that they owe BY LAW, is screaming and whining that banks are "criminals".

Criminals are people who break agreements. The banks haven't broken any. Only Obama supporters like yourself who won't pay your bills and won't surrender your collateral as you promised to do are criminals.

Franglo: "Now, if the system worked it would be able to handle people defaulting. It couldn't. Because it is rotten and full of high-flying crooks."

Now we are getting somewhere. The system would be able to handle a certain number of foreclosures, for sure. The problem, of course, and I am glad you are close to identifying it, is that the credit system was tweaked by the politicians to impose bad credits on a system that is designed to weed out bad credits. The political aim was, like most, very well intentioned. Politicians wanted poor people with poor credit to own homes. Everyone believed that an ownership society was a good society. The problem is that some cohorts should rent until they have adequate credit. This is the root of the breakdown. The system is not corrupt in and of itself but it was corrupted by having an illegitimate concept imposed upon it: that bad credits can become good credits by being blended with good credits. Credit rating agencies were bludgeoned by politicos (and then by the banks who require the politicos' blessing to lend)to wave magic wands over the credits and declare them OK. They were not OK. The "system" could not absorb phony credit.

Again, had the bad credits kept their bargain everything would have been OK.

I'm fascinated by the OWS protests of, among other things, "income inequality."

If you really want to blow their minds, ask them to confirm that they want a doctor paid the same amount as a ditchdigger -- or a college graduate paid the same amount as a non-graduate.

When they protest, say, "Why not? You wanted income equality. Paying people differently is income inequality".

When they start to spin about how some peoples' work is more valuable, then state, "Really? So how do you determine that? Do you think you should make as much as a corporate executive with twenty years of experience, two more degrees than yours, and a company that employs thousands of people and adds millions of dollars to the GDP each year?"

North Dallas Thirty: "Income Equality" is just a slogan, no more nor less obnoxious and meaningless than "Coexist." It is a linguistic symbol indicating that you are a member of the group that is on the side of right. Very similar, if not redundant, to "Social Justice."

Unfortunately for the disciplined and responsible their ideas are a bit more wordy. How to say: don't drop out of school in sixth grade, don't knock up a girl and then abandon her and your child, get an entry level job, any job, and work your way up. Do not whine. do not blame others for your failings. Etc. Not as poetic as "income equality."

One front tooth, bucked out & crooked (forget eating the rich; this guy has trouble eating carrots)TattoosRaiders cap (probably channels the late Al Davis known throughout the land, not just in the NFL, as one mean individual)Quite the graphic artist (the symbols suggest a highly confused mind)What does that t-shirt say (we can only imagine)

Garage: I would think that unions are the smartest guys in the room, unions and solar panel makers. In both cases the rules were suspended to trash contracts or in the solar case to subordinate public debt to private equity! A first. Very creative lefty move.

Michael: Please explain how ratings agencies giving CDOs filled with lower-tier volatile debt AAA ratings has something to do with bludgeoning by politicos.

You are delusional.

And here's a handy explanation for "Income Inequality" especially for those who are willfully dense. It's a chart. It shows that the only group to show meaningful progress in our "shared prosperity" in the past 30 years is the richest 1% of the population.

Are not bankers the smartest people in the room? Why would they give out money to people that shouldn't have qualified? I think I know why

Of course you don't know why, idiot.

But let me help you:

Scott Simon was one of those buyers. He works in the mortgage department at Pimco, the world's largest bond manager, and one of the biggest buyers of Fannie and Freddie securities:

"Fannie and Freddie in meetings with investors, whether it was us or anybody else, essentially just would sort of laugh and say, 'Well, you know the government will stand behind us,'" Simon says.

Truer words were never secretly spoken. But when the bailout finally did happen, it happened in a way almost no one would have foreseen.

For decades, Fannie and Freddie had used their implicit government guarantee to get huge and powerful. But they got huge and powerful in a pretty boring way. They dealt mostly with standard, 30-year, fixed-rate loans. Borrowers had to document their employment and income, and most made a down payment of 10 to 20 percent.

But then, in the mid-2000s, subprime lenders came on the scene, making loans to people with no income and no jobs

Alex: Creditors always make a bad decision when they lend to the non-credit worthy. The non-credit worthy are always making a good decision when they can borrow, especially when the money is cheap. The problem with Garage is that he thinks creditors make good decisions when they lend to bad credits and that bad credits are too stupid to have taken the money without being tricked. He is not optimistic about mankind.

Hell I'm guilty of blame shifting myself. I rage about it for a couple of hours, then I realize it's my mistake and I improve so that I don't make the same mistake again. That's what normal people do if they want to progress in life. Those that don't end up in OWS protests. The kind of people you NEVER want to associate with.

franglo: I see you have tired of trying. That's ok. A diversion is perfectly acceptable. You would do better to read the WSJ for economic news than Rolling Stone. The latter has a guy working with the OWS group that has the lingo and the anger but he doesn't really get it either. You are not doing a bad job at trying out your argument it is just as though you are doing so in a language you have just learned. You are using terms in a way that betrays your unfamiliarity. It does not advance your argument by calling someone delusional who operates in the world you appear to know little about.

I did not use the phrase "share prosperity" and don't care about it one way or the other.

The chart you link has no sources. If correct what does it prove? Is the top 1% taking money that could otherwise have been yours? Is that your beef?

Garage: I will try and make it simple. A general rule in finance is that loans are what we call superior to equity. That means that if there is a problem the lender gets his money before the equity investor. That "rule" (and I did not mean to confuse you by using that term in such a loose way) was upended in the Solandra financing where the money you and I loaned the company is subordinate (that means behind) the equity. Get it? I am happy to amplify.

In the case of General Motors the same thing happened when debt holders were shoved out of the way by the new "equity" investors.

Here's the point, Michael. Clearly I don't know as much about finance as you. But I know well enough about what happened in the past 3 years to say that blaming everything that went wrong on Democrats and Fannie and Freddie is a ridiculous, obscene way to obfuscate the obvious responsibility that the private sector financial services industry had in the crisis. And given the dollar amounts of money involved, the lion's share of responsibility for the crisis lies with private investment banks. That's where your delusion lies. For you, it stops with Fannie and Freddie and poor people owning homes when their obvious troglodyte greedy minds should have precluded them from owning anything.

You are an ideologue, as much as you are snootily posing as a paragon of wisdom and rationality.

Michael: clear and concise, ignores the double speak and goes right to the critical point. Point/Game/Match

Franglo: Slingin' and sloppin' with half or less truths, symptomatic of pathological liars that always have a small morsel of truth but the rest mostly confabulation. Where'd ol'Fran glo anyway? Even the Brewers stayed and finished the game...not nice to start something and leave in the middle. Lose by default, not bringing facts to the game and staying to defend your own facts. Bad form.

Great sidebar by many others like Jay, Rose, damikesc et all. Good team play, passing, even a few trick plays, thought I saw a fleaflicker or two.

The usual from J, Garage and no doubt the name fits...Dead Julius? It is what it is...willfull ignorance for which I fear there is no cure.

Franglo: Have I used the word "Democrats" in this discussion? I don't recall. As to Fannie and Freddie you might find that they operated, and operate now, in a way that is a bit loosey goosey. Did so under Republicans and Democrats, both of which parties accepted the belief that home ownership was good for all.

Now you bring up the concept of "private investment banks" which I would implore you to name if they are the root cause of these problems. You do realize, of course, that GS, MS, JPM, et al are public companies?

Here's the point, Michael. Clearly I don't know as much about finance as you. But I know well enough about what happened in the past 3 years to say that blaming everything that went wrong on Democrats and Fannie and Freddie is a ridiculous, obscene way to obfuscate the obvious responsibility that the private sector financial services industry had in the crisis.

Shoudl have stopped with the bolded sentence, Franglo. You were ahead of the game at that point, but then immediately went completely off the rails in sentence three.

Michael, why don't you take your working brain and use it in an industry that contributes something to mankind? Instead of pushing money around, producing nothing, and getting paid way too much for it?

Franglo: When I raise money for a company it is always for an expansion of their plant and equipment. They use the capital to produce more goods and in nearly every case to hire more people to do so. Generally, the capital will be used to pay for architects and designers to design the building. Contractors and their subs are then hired to construct the addition. Equipment manufacturers are then contacted to design and build new equipment and then the equipment has to be installed. I would say that every assignment that I successfully conclude employs over 100 people on a permanent basis and several hundred during the construction phase. Sometimes in the thousands, but I don't get enough of those to brag.

I get paid when the transaction closes and money moves to the clients account. I do not get a paycheck unless I perform.

Michael, I apologize. You are clearly a real American hero. Firefighters ain't got nothing on you. For you are the true. The proud. The I-banker.

I only hope that this torrent of criticism doesn't cause you any more undue discomfort. I know it's hard out there right now-- your Xmas bonus may not be in the 5 figures this year. But you'll manage. You're a shit-kicking American I-Banker.

franglo, you're hilarious, dude. If we didn't have bankers, someone would still have to allocate capital. We've seen what happens when the government takes on that role - glorious Five Year Plans for tractor production that never happen and crops rotting in the fields.

What's your plan to efficiently allocate capital in the absence of the evil banksters?

Lemme remind you of something, dude: that's not your money that's paying for all those jobs.

You make nothing.

You are a fucking paper pusher with an oversize ego and more money than you know what to do with. And on some level it bothers you since you are using blog comments to prove your mental and social superiority to yourself.

Franglo: No it is not my money paying for those jobs it is my clients money once I raise it for him from investors. My client hires me and agrees to pay me to find the capital for him. If he does not hire me he hires someone like me or he has a guy in his company who he pays to raise it for him. The guy in the company would not be a bargain because he does not need a capital specialist all the time.

How would the client get the money efficiently if not for me or someone like me? Do you know?

I have a lot less money this afternoon than I did this morning. Tax day for the late payers!! Big checks to the U.S. and to the state. Glad to pay it. Glad to have the money to pay it.

You seem to be hung up on social standing. Is there a reason you are so pissed off?

You are a fucking paper pusher with an oversize ego and more money than you know what to do with. And on some level it bothers you since you are using blog comments to prove your mental and social superiority to yourself.

Franglo - not a drop spilled on you, is there? You should seek help for your feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps by finding something meaningful and useful to do with yourself.

But I know well enough about what happened in the past 3 years to say that blaming everything that went wrong on Democrats and Fannie and Freddie is a ridiculous, obscene way to obfuscate the obvious responsibility that the private sector financial services industry had in the crisis.

But of course. Fannie and Freddie, at the urging of the Obama Party, lower their credit standards, back bad loans with the implied guarantee of bailout by the US government, lie about their creditworthiness, and fraudulently manipulate their accounting, but it is ALL PRIVATE INDUSTRY'S FAULT!

And given the dollar amounts of money involved, the lion's share of responsibility for the crisis lies with private investment banks.

Most MBSs are issued by the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), a U.S. government agency, or the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), U.S. government-sponsored enterprises. Ginnie Mae, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, guarantees that investors receive timely payments. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also provide certain guarantees and, while not backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, have special authority to borrow from the U.S. Treasury.

So again, you notice here: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the other governmental agencies are the ones lowering their credit standards, misrepresenting their products, and cooking their books, all with the full endorsement and support of the Obama Party.

Do you care? No. You don't give a damn about accounting fraud, about misrepresentation, or anything of the sort when governmental agencies and your precious Obama Party are doing it.

Lemme remind you of something, dude: that's not your money that's paying for all those jobs.

You make nothing.

LOL, and little piss-ants like you sitting around a public park screaming and taking a dump on cop cars ARE making something?

You're upset because someone has more money than you, and like you always did with your parents, you're throwing a temper tantrum until they hand over their wallet.

No more, brat. Put up or shut up. Why should society pay you for existing? You don't do anything other than damage legitimate businesses. You don't do anything other than crapping your pants in a park and making messes for other people to clean up.

You lose, brat. You're finally finding out what it's like to have adult supervision. Pity you didn't learn this when you were a child, but your parents clearly didn't care enough to teach you manners.

After all, lazy-ass brats like himself got allowances for breathing, gold stars for showing up, and A's for repeating their "gender studies" professor's diatribes blaming white males for every problem in the universe.

Franglo and his ilk aren't smart enough to use a public restroom; they have to drop their pants and crap on cop cars. As that demonstrates, they have no useful skills, no intelligence, and even fewer manners, yet they expect to be paid better than people who put in an honest 40 hour week.

Shouldn't you be busy and happy? Isn't there a drop of blood left in the body politic that you should be leeching off?

Oh, is that your excuse, worthless brat?

Answer us this: how do you think someone like you who rants and screams about how Jewish bankers are destroying the world will be received in an office?

Or how do you think companies will deal with someone like yourself who just sidles up and takes craps on police cars?

Franglo Brat has zero skills, zero manners, zero intelligence, and zero common sense, yet he screams and whines that other people should pay his bills and give him money.

Poor humiliated disgusting little brat. No wonder you're screaming and flailing at Michael; you are jealous. And like the spiteful little Obama child you follow, the only thing you can do is try to tear him down -- because you're too lazy to lift yourself up.

Franglo: I apologize for calling you a stupid cocksucker. You see, you made the assumption that I do not produce anything in my professional life when in fact I do. I do not shuffle paper all day or however you put it. I sometimes make a lot of money but other years I go without making anything at all. It is frustrating to me to see obviously unsophisticated people make assumption about what an entire industry does. No doubt you do not have training in finance or business. Neither, as a matter of fact did I. My advanced degree is in the humanities and I never once took a business course.

I can see that you have been disappointed in life and I am certainly sorry for that as well as calling you a stupid cocksucker.

The philosopher Philo of Alexandria put it best and I cannot follow it closely enough: be kind for they too are engaged in a great struggle.

'It shows that the only group to show meaningful progress in our "shared prosperity" in the past 30 years is the richest 1% of the population.'

Just a few examples from my life:

Then: cable TV with 34 channels! Amazing! 588-2300 Empire.

Now: satellite with hundreds of channels

Then: a telephone owned by the phone company, a box sitting on the table or stuck to the wall, to talk on the phone you trailed a wire.

Now: cell phones that you can use to surf the 'net.

Then: almost no one had computers in their homes.

Now: almost everyone in this country has one in their home. This will transform from a feature to a bug when SkyNet becomes self-aware.

Should I provide some examples from the world of medicine as well, or do you get my drift?

And we also again we see the labor theory of value being floated. AReasonableMan was trumpeting it ad nauseum the other day, but took great offense when I asked him whether he: 1) realized that's what it was; and 2) asked if he was a Marxist (he took the question as an accusation for some reason), and I really wanted to know whether he was. So I'll ask you, franglo, are you a Marxist? I know you can be a proponent of the labor theory of value and not be a Marxist, so what do you label yourself that you espouse such a theory if not a Marxist?

Michael - not sure if you are correct about the additional monies thrown into Solyndra by Kaiser, et al. My understanding was that it was debt. Or, possibly something in the middle. In any case, by law, it should have been behind the U.S. government in priority.

Of course, we found with GM and Chrysler how much that means in real life, when the Obama Administration has the choice of bailing out heavy backers or following the rule of law...

Above and beyond the illegality of all this, it is also worrisome for our system of financing commerce and business. The higher the priority of an obligation, the lower its cost, and visa versa. But how do you price such if you don't know if the money you are lending a company will be repaid before its union workers or insiders are? The unfortunate answer is that you have to factor that into the equation, and that means that lenders to businesses are going to have to charge more to companies to cover this uncertainty. And, that means less lending and less job formation.

One thing that bothers me about Solyndra, and, indeed, the entire "green energy" loan program, is that it is structured like "heads I win big, tails the government loses big". At best the government gets its money back. At worse, it loses it. There is no upside to the government lending.

Of course, the obvious point should be made here, that the only reason that these companies have to get U.S. government loan guarantees is that they are bad business risks, and most often, that is because they have losing business plans.

And, Soyndra is exemplary of what happens when the government tries to make investment decisions - it makes them on political, and not economic, grounds, and, thus, we should not be the least bit surprised when a very large number of them fail. They fail because the underlying business and its business plan, was a failure. Otherwise, they would have gotten funded through private sources.

Of course, we also now see that the "green energy" loans are really a slush fund for connected Democrats. Note that the company that Pelosi's brother runs just got a $3/4 billion dollar loan guarantee. And, I would not be surprised if people close to Harry Reid got their share too.

What was interesting this last weekend about some of the debate between the Astroturf OccuplyDC and Tea Party is that there really is some common ground. In retrospect, TARP seems like it was a big slush fund used to bail out the biggest banks, Goldman-Sachs, GM, Chrysler, GE, etc. and that those organizations should have been allowed to fail, and then go through reorganization. But, the fix was in, and they covered their gambles with federal money, and their insurance was the hundreds of millions spent in lobbying and election campaigns.

The concept is called "creative destruction". Those who do things right, succeed, and those who don't have their assets reallocated to those that do.

Instead, many of the people who caused the mess in the first place walked away with billions, and left us with the tab.

And, the worst insult was "Dodd-Frank", written by the members of Congress probably most responsible for the bubble, effectively exempting many of the companies that benefited most from it, while burdening those smaller banks and other financial institutions that did things right. But, at least a good part of the voters now know that the reason that they will now have to pay for using their debit cards was Dick Durban and his amendment to their bill.

But that agreement is why this movement is so dangerous for the Democrats. They are the ones who most believe in the form of socialism known best as crony capitalism (and, yes, before that "fascism"). They are the ones who have spent the last 3-5 years taking care of their constituents, bailing them out, after they caused the problems leading up to the financial collapse, and continue to shovel money to the best connected and those who spend the most on getting the politicians reelected, as well as all their friends. The Democrats are the party of looters, and the unemployed or underemployed recent college grads in the protest are some of the ones who are paying the biggest price for this.

So, some in the Tea Party movement are saying that now everyone is starting to see what they were protesting all along, that the biggest companies, along with the unions, are in bed with the politicians, and the Democrats have notably more culpability here than do the Republicans (many of whom are not blameless either). And, all of the rest of us are paying the price for this corruption, with the collapse of the housing market, the massive unemployment, and ballooning national debt, that the dupes who put Obama in office three years ago will spend their lives paying off.

Of course, since the Occupy movement was Astroturf from day 1, and is still apparently being run and manipulated by the DNC, Sorros, MSM, etc., the more that the Tea Party agrees with this part of their message, the more they will have to move to the left to distinguish themselves. And this means the more they will look like and sound like the socialists of the early part of the 20th Century.

The president’s treasury secretary was in charge of the New York Fed [during the start of] the bailout. The president reappointed Ben Bernanke, a key architect of the bailout. . . . The president’s White House National Economic Council director took almost a million dollars from Goldman Sachs before joining the administration. . . . The president’s national security adviser is a former top Fannie Mae lobbyist, and both of his OMB chiefs have ties to big banks. Obama’s current chief of staff is from JP Morgan Chase, and his predecessor was on the board of Freddie Mac. . . . If the president really wants to send Wall Street a message why doesn’t he just convene a meeting of his senior staff?

This is insightful, polling the OWS from Doug Schoen (Pres. Clinton's former pollster):

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%). . .

Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).

Bruce Hyden. The problem with green energy is that it doesnt yet work. I have followed and invested in a number of companies over the course of thirty years that have tried to solve the storage problem, the cost problem, etc. It is a fantasy to think that very smart and well capitalized people have not thought of going green. The politicians are stubbornly stupid on this issue notable John McCain who had the idea of awarding 100 million to the firm that could develop a battery to deliver a car over 150 miles. Or something like that only a politician would think such a paltry amount would be the prize for this achievement. The people pouring money and brainpower into this over the decades would add three zeroes to his suggested amount.